Tag: Astrophotography

I read at Spaceweather.com over the week-end that the latest sunspot AR2665 was HUGE, and the biggest sunspot of 2017 so, not having photographed the Sun for sometime I thought it would be interesting to make an image of this Sunspot on the Sun. I dug out my solar filter then Monday morning set up my camera in the backyard and waited for the morning sun to climb above the mountain tops. I cropped this image in 25% so we can see the spot a bit better.

“Sunspot AR2665 has grown into a behemoth almost as wide as the planet Jupiter: Stretching more than 125,000 km from end to end and containing dozens of dark cores, the active region is an now easy target for backyard solar telescopes. Sunspot AR2665 has a ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic field that harbors energy for M-class solar flares.. “~http://spaceweather.com/

I’ll add you can see it with a Telephoto lens, and Solar filter. Caveat: Don’t ever attempt to photograph the sun without a Solar Filter. You can permanently damage your eyes, and your camera’s sensor.

I use an Orion 4.10″ ID Full Aperture Solar Filter. It fits snugly over my lens allowing me to look directly at the sun and photograph it by blocking 99.999% of incoming sunlight for safe observation and astrophotography. I’ve had this filter for several years and it’s worked perfectly, and is easy to use. It fits my 300mm f/4 perfectly. It slides over my 200-500mm’s 82mm front end element, but not so far that I’m able to secure it with the screws so, to make sure it wouldn’t fall off I taped it to my lens barrel. Gaffers tape or Painters tape works.

I linked to the filter so you can check it out if you’re interested. I am not affiliated with Orion and do not receive any compensation or products for using their products or mentioning them.

4 planes, and one shooting star flew through the sky while I was imaging. I didn’t see the shooting star at the time as I was looking away helping a friend with her settings and intervalometer. I was thrilled to see I caught it on film though.

While watching the night sky for Perseid Meteors Friday night I shot just under 300 frames. In all those frames I only managed to photograph 3 meteors! The rest that I saw were over my head or just out of the frame.

What to do with all those frames of stars? Stack them to make a Star Trail image is one thing.

Passing car headlights, other star gazers using their flashlights, and headlamps…maybe my own red headlamp too unintentionally light painted the trees, and foreground bushes for me.

If I get a chance to photograph the Perseids or any other meteor showers this year or next I’ll use my 16mm Fisheye lens to get more sky in my frame.

I went out Friday night/Saturday morning star gazing hoping to photograph a meteor or two of the Perseid meteor shower. The Perseid Meteor shower is an annual event occurring from mid July to mid August as the Earth crosses the orbital path of Comet Swift-Tuttle; the parent of the Perseid meteor shower. Debris from the comet litters its orbital path, but we don’t get into the dense part of it until the first week of August. It’s this debris that slams into Earth’s upper atmosphere at 130,000 mile per hour lighting up the night sky with streaking Perseid meteors.

This year was to be particularly good for viewing more meteors because of our position in the debris path.

I saw a few really great meteors with wonderful balls of fire streaking through the sky, but the best image I made in 4 hours of sky watching was of this little meteor with some red at the head and a green tail. It’s a first time I’ve photographed the green tail.

There’s some of the Milky Way in there too, but faint, but there were oh, so many stars!

The July Full Moon is called the “Buck Moon” in North America because male Deer are usually beginning to grow their antlers again in July.
The July Full Moon also has two other names. The Hay Moon; July is when Farmers begin storing their Hay, and the Thunder Moon because of the many thunder storms in the month of July.

I made this image in Santa Cruz, CA. The Moon looks large because it’s close to the horizon. Being on the coast there was a lot of moisture/atmosphere in the air, and the fog was slowly rolling in from the southeast so, the Moon looks a bit diffused.

The Moon was so pretty in the pink reflected light of the Belt of Venus. The pink part of the sky after sunset is called the Belt of Venus. It’s a phenomenon that happens after sunset and before sunrise. “The dark band of the Earth’s shadow at dusk and dawn often has a light pink arch above it, known as the Belt of Venus. It extends about 10-20 degrees up from the horizon, acting as a boundary between the shadow and the sky. The effect is due to the reddened sunlight being backscattered in the atmosphere, which produces the rosy glow.”~http://www.howitworksdaily.com/what-is-the-belt-of-venus/

Last week I shared with you the Top 10 Images that received the most views over on my flickr site today I’m going to share with you My Personal favorite images from 2015. Most of these I posted on the blog, so you’ll probably recognize them or feel a sense of Deja-vu. 🙂

I selected these images based on emotions, technical merit, or because I met a personal goal. I got my picks down to 36 then spent a couple of days whittling those down to just 10. It’s so hard! I have an emotional attachment to all of them. 🙂

Without further ado…My Personal Top 10 Images of 2015:

1)Running in Rain Puddles. He’s just awesome, and brings me so much joy. I love being a Grandma!!

2) Milky Way over Mt Shasta- This was an Epic night spent with Dear Friends. I hope we are able to get together to shoot here again this year.

3) Total Lunar Eclipse over the Palace of Fine Arts San Francisco- This was another epic night. There was weeks of planning, chasing the Moon across town from one location to this one, working the camera to get the shots all the while hoping it would all come together in post production. It’s pretty great when it does.

4) Cooper’s Hawk- I think. There are a few images in this selection that I haven’t shared before. More times than I care to admit I find I lack the confidence that a certain image I love will be well received, or what happens to me quite a lot is that I’m not crazy about the images when I first upload them after a shoot so, I let them marinate awhile. When I return to them months or years later I find I like them a whole lot more.

This Hawk in the reeds in Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge is an image I really like, but thought it might be too pedestrian to post back in January 2015 when I photographed it. I love its face, the clarity of the eye, the natural environment, and the fact that I was able to make the image before it flew away.

5) Northern Flicker-Male – Another image never shown before today. This bird has been a nemesis of mine for years! They too are flighty.

I’d read reports of him being spotted in a neighborhood not from me in Jan/Feb. 2015, so one day a friend and I went looking for him. We found him deep in the shadows of this tree. Once I got it uploaded and did some post production work to open up the shadows I was happy with the image, and feel like I can say it’s not my nemesis anymore. They’re such beautiful birds.

6) Salsify macro- This was an image I photographed for my Project 52/2015 using my LensBaby Composer Pro wit the macro adapters. I love my LensBaby System and that creamy background.

7) Still-life “Why fit in when you were born to stand out.” Dr. Seuss

This one makes the cut because I got the lighting, and composition that I wanted to make right.

8) Orange Crowned Warbler. I haven’t seen this little bird too often and photographing them is so hard; they’re small, and are so fidgety you have to be quick. This particular morning I set up my rig by a seep that was drawing in birds from the area for a drink. Patience when birding is essential. It paid off this morning. I waited 30 minutes or so for this bird to come to the seep. This is the best image I’ve made of this species.

9) Great Egret- Another bird image I’ve never before shared. I love the colors, and how clear its eye is.

10)Sunrise cresting San Francisco Skyline from Kirby Cove. It was worth the mile hike back up for this image. Being there was awesome.

These are my favorites from 2015. Thank you for being so supportive, and letting me share my images with you. I look forward to seeing your images, reading your poems, thoughts, and seeing the places you travel from my arm-chair this year.

Last Saturday a friend and I went up to Yosemite to photograph the Night Sky because the Moon was rising in the wee hours of the night we’d have several hours of dark sky to photograph the Milky Way.
This is just one view of the sky that I made.

I love how many more stars one is able to see up here in comparison to the city I live in; where far fewer stars are seen due to light pollution.

I adore city life and all it’s conveniences, but I need the country and high mountains for the serenity, beauty, and dark skies. I hope we as a people in this country can appreciate the stars enough to save some land/parks for dark skies because seeing so many stars is amazing, wondrous, and so inspiring that a special kind of person has the drive and adventurous spirit to travel among them no matter what the risk! If I had the math skills required for space travel I’d be there in a nano second!